PICO-8 on RetroFlag GPi Case

Sun, 01 Aug 2021 19:33:13 UTC

I've tried a few guides to try and make a quick booting PICO-8 cartridge for RetroFlag GPi Case (https://www.retroflag.com/GPi-CASE.html), most of them seem outdated and not completely easy IMHO.

I'm pretty familiar with LAKKA (https://www.lakka.tv/) - a retroarch distro that supports plenty of devices and is based on OpenELEC, so uses a very lightweight quick booting goodness.

So, here goes a small guide:

Download a compatible LAKKA image for the GPi-Case: (https://le-builds.lakka.tv/GPICase.arm/Lakka-GPICase.arm-3.2.img.gz) OR a later one if this post gets too old.
"burn" the image to a micro-sd (16Gb should be more than enough).
Put it back in the GPi-Case and let it boot at least once so that it can resize the partition.
Once booted and in retroarch, goto Settings -> Services -> Enable SSH
Still in Settings, goto Wifi, and connect to your local Wifi.
Go back to the main menu, and select Information -> Network to view the IP address you got.
Login via SSH from your PC (root/root).
Run the following:
mkdir /storage/roms/pico-8
cd /storage/roms/pico-8
Download the pico-8 pi binary (if you bought it, you should have the URL):
'wget https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/xxxxxx/pico-8_0.2.2c_raspi.zip'
run this command: unzip ./pico-8_0.2.2c_raspi.zip
create a runscript for pico-8:
nano /storage/roms/pico-8/run_pico8.sh

paste the following into the script:

#!/bin/bash
SDL_VIDEO_GL_DRIVER=/usr/lib/libGLESv2.so SDL_VIDEO_EGL_DRIVER=/usr/lib/libGLESv2.so /storage/roms/pico8 -splore -preblit_scale 6 -draw_rect 32,0,256,240 -pixel_perfect 0

create a systemd service file for pico-8:
nano /storage/.config/system.d/pico8.service

paste the following into the systemd service:

[Unit]
Description=Pico-8
After=gpicase-safeshutdown.service
ConditionKernelCommandLine=!pico=0
[Service]
Environment=HOME=/storage
ExecStart=/storage/roms/pico-8/run_pico8.sh
KillMode=killall pico8
TimeoutStopSec=10
Restart=always
RestartSec=2
StartLimitInterval=0
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable the service systemctl enable pico8.service
poweroff the gpi, and insert the micro-sd back into your PC.
disable retroatch by editing cmdline.txt and adding the following to the end of the boot= line:
retroarch=0
That's it. put the micro-sd back in the cart, and it should boot straight into PICO-8 splore mode.

If in the future, you want to switch back to retroarch:
remove the retroarch=0 and add pico8=0 to the end of the boot= line in the cmdline.txt file.

duduke [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

PICO-8 on RetroFlag GPi Case